Author Scott Turow may be best known for writing Presumed Innocent, the 1990 box office hit starring Harrison Ford, and his other crime-thrillers. But following his service on former Governor George Ryan’s state commission on capital punishment, he also became an outspoken advocate for abolishing the death penalty. It’s for that work that the Illinois Innocence Project last night awarded Turow with this year’s Defender of the Innocent award. Illinois Public Radio Statehouse Bureau Chief Amanda Vinicky spoke with Turow about how he went from having no opinion on death penalty to adopting the belief that it’s unjust.